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What you’re eating for lunch today – chicken sandwich? Pasta pesto? Green salad? I don’t know about you and actually haven’t decided yet for myself either, but I know what Rob Rhinehart will have.

Hold your Charlton Heston jokes, he is probably going to have a bottle full of Soylent, a liquid food replacement he developed that is made from “broken-down multivitamins, raw elements like potassium and magnesium purchased from lab supply stores, and olive and fish oils, among other ingredients.”

This liquid food includes the essential ingredients the body needs to thrive explains Rhinehart, a 24-year-old programmer from Atlanta, who is the co-founder of a new startup by the same name (Soylent). In the last five months, he has been living on Soylent almost exclusively, with very occasional solid meal here and there, testing on himself the impacts of what he sees as “a more efficient way to stay nourished.”

And the results so far? Rhinehart reports improved concentration and strength as well as weight loss. “By every objective measure, I’m an incredibly healthy person,” he told Gawker’s Adrian Chen two months ago. “It’s been a huge change, not just in terms of sleep and gym performance but cognition. I can say I feel much more alert, and more patient, and optimistic.”

One adjective I might add to the list is visionary. While Rhinehart by no means suggests his new liquid drink is meant to revolutionize the food system, he certainly sees it as a way to provide a nutritious and efficient alternative to people who see food as more of a tiring chore aimed at keeping us energized and want to reduce the hassle of energy consumption to minimum.

For these people Rhinehart wants to transform food into a sort of an effortless utility. Here’s how he described his vision to Inc’s Christine Lagorio:

You could make it like a utility. In the United States, the way that no one really worries about water, it’s just always available, you don’t really have to think about it. I mean it does cost something in places, people pay their water bills, but you don’t really have to worry about it. That’s what I would like food to be.

Rhinehart’s journey into the food territory started more or less accidently. He was working on building affordable wireless networks for developing countries at Y Combinator (YC) but investors he got in touch with didn’t seem interested in putting money into it. Then, he did what YC’s Paul Graham has called “The biggest pivot in YC history.”

He started reading everything he could on essential nutrients, trying and mixing until he created a fluid food that included “every substance the body needs to survive, plus a few extras shown to be beneficial, and purchased all of them in nearly raw chemical form from a variety of sources.”

And the taste? Rhinehart likes it. “It’s a very “complete” sensation, more sweet than anything,” he told Vice. Others reported on a wider range of experiences – at Gawker, where he brought some for the staff to taste, feedback ranged from “it tasted like someone wrung out a dishtowel into a glass” to “It was great and I love it. I don’t want to eat anymore.”

Safety is also an issue when experimenting with food, but apparently Rhinehart has nothing to worry about. “He basically made medical food,” Jay Mirtallo, a professor of pharmacy at Ohio State University told The Washington Post. The Post’s reporter asked Mirtallo if he could live a healthy life just drinking Soylent from here on out. “You can completely,” Mirtallo answered. “But I don’t know why you’d want to. There are so many social aspects to food in what we do.”

Mirtallo touched what seems to be one of Soylent’s main flaws – even if we assume it will prove itself as safe, nutritious, healthy, efficient and a cheap (Rhinehart spends on it about $7.60 a day) alternative to “regular food,” the vision it represents of food as a mechanic activity that is mostly about providing us with the energy we need misses much of the contribution food, and especially cooking our food, made to civilization.

As Michael Pollan writes in his book, Cooked, “Cooking gave us not just the meal but also the occasion: the practice of eating together at an appointed time and place… But sitting down to common meals, making eye contact, sharing food, and exercising self-restraint all served to civilize us.”

This objection and others didn’t stop Rhinehart from running a very successful crowdfunding campaign, finding enthusiastic volunteers who also experimented with Soylent, and, in general, creating a lot of positive buzz around it.

The real test, though, would be if and when he manages to fulfill the FDA requirements – then he will need to show not only Soylent’s competitive advantages over the current healthy liquid foods available on the market and last, but not least, that there’s a market for this product.

If Rhinehart is right and there are enough people with needs like his, then he might be able to establish a viable alternative for the too-busy-not foodie-fast-solution lovers. If not, at least Soylent provided us with some liquid food for thought about our ongoing relationship with food.

Raz Godelnik is the co-founder of Eco-Libris and an adjunct faculty at the University of Delaware’s Business School, CUNY SPS and Parsons The New School for Design, teaching courses in green business, sustainable design and new product development. You can follow Raz on Twitter.

Raz Godelnik is an Assistant Professor and the Co-Director of the MS in Strategic Design & Management program at Parsons School of Design in New York. Currently, his research projects focus on the impact of the sharing economy on traditional business, the sharing economy and cities’ resilience, the future of design thinking, and the integration of sustainability into Millennials’ lifestyles. Raz is the co-founder of two green startups – Hemper Jeans and Eco-Libris and holds an MBA from Tel Aviv University.

6 responses

“Soylent” sounds like a great idea on many levels, the intention and hope of finding a solution for world hunger through an easy to manufacture and ship product is admirable.

Personally I believe that food coming from nature has in it much more than nutrition, especially when grown with love, and cooked with love and joy. We are vibrational beings and when nature which has a vibration that is not disturbed by the human mind’s chatter, and even more when the vibration is amplified by the vibration of love emitted from the care taker of the food, it provides much more than the necessary elements for nutrition. Having a quick and complete nutritiont solution when cooking is not an option is great, yet I wouldn’t see it as a replacement for lovingly grown and cooked food.

There are high quality protein powders on the market; many people blend fruit and veg. smoothies with or without yogurt, and other variations. Taking fish oils, multiple vit and min. and using herbs and spices gives more variety. Elderly people with less appetites do this, to incl homemade veg soups, while eating small portions of meat,.fish. This replacement mentioned would be great for people same as they would drink Boost or Ensure, like for lunch at work, or on the road trips/camping, or pressed for time, running late, etc.

As far as I understand, consuming soylent doesn’t produce body wastes. Though it sounds like a good thing at first, I have doubts. Lets say I’ve only consumed solyent for a few years. Will my excretion system work when i consume another solid food?

My wife has been selling a meal replacement shake that was developed by real nutritionists and physiologists and has been on the market for over 20 years. It has actual FDA approval (you can check) and is used by Olympic athletes (you can check).

Not only can you buy from her, you can sell it yourself and make oodles of cash – is Rob offering you that chance?